


Substitutions

by faithinthepoor



Series: Popular [4]
Category: Popular (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Mary Charity</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitutions

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [An Analysis of Evil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/629934) and [Leading Nowhere](http://archiveofourown.org/works/629941) and is a companion piece to [Windmills of the Mind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/629984)

It has been a very strange year so far, she knows that she actively made the decision to behave differently and while, despite what most of the student body thinks, she doesn’t believe that she is the centre of the universe, she has to admit this seems to have caused some ripple effects. It’s not exactly a Jimmy Stewart It’s a Wonderful Life epiphany but it’s hard not to think that the world would be a different place without her when taking herself out of the equation has undeniably changed the atmosphere at school and maybe not for the better. Who could have possibly conceived of a world where Carmen was Homecoming Queen or where April Tuna was president? She is familiar with war clichés so she knows that to the victor go the spoils and you can’t win the war if you avoid the battlefield and all that stuff so she can’t complain, in fact she is sort of happy for them but she does have some reservations. She likes Carmen and thinks she deserves happiness but knows from personal experience that being elected Homecoming Queen may come with it’s own brief fairytale princess moment, complete with tiara but it doesn’t last, the glitter fades and somehow having your picture hang in a bathroom for all eternity doesn’t seem like a legacy one should aspire to, maybe Carmen will feel differently though and as for April, well, she deserves something but Brooke can’t help thinking that she really is quite frightened of April and that in a position of power, April could well destroy the world. She takes comfort in the fact that Nicole isn’t ruling the school and knows that it’s a horrible thought to have about one’s best friend but the thought is there and she doesn’t believe that it is entirely fuelled by jealousy, in fact Nicole is probably more dangerous than April and if Nicole destroyed anything it would be by design rather than by accident.

She wanted to feel different but she is not sure that being sans Glamazon jacket, sans Josh and entering the arena of student politics has achieved the outcome that she desired. If she is honest, she wanted more than to feel different, she wanted to be different but she is just the same except now she is without her accessories, be they boyfriend or uniform, and she has managed to embarrass herself in front of the whole school. The sad thing is that she didn’t even want to be different for herself, she wanted Sam to see her as more than someone who prances around in a short skirt and hangs out with the beautiful people. She wanted to have substance and she wanted Sam to notice but the irony is she that changed because she thought Sam hated everything that she represented and yet last year, when she wasn’t desperately trying to impress the brunette, she had her and now Sam has George, the perfect football playing boyfriend, and she has nothing but emptiness and self-recrimination to keep her warm at night.

Things at the moment seem so far removed from when she was spending her summer with her mother that that time has taken on an almost ethereal quality and she regrets her decision to stay but it’s too late, her mother wouldn't want to know her now, after all nobody else does. She is not ever going to live in the dream house with Malibu Skipper and Ken but maybe the whole Barbie doll theory wasn’t so far off - she is blonde, she feels so fake that she may as well be plastic and she is easily broken. She has gotten so lost that apparently she is willing to date Harrison, willing to have him make her decisions for her, because if you don’t make decisions, you can’t make mistakes. She could have chosen anyone but here she is, flirting with the boy whom she started spending time with in hospital so that she could be in his room in case Sam visited. It’s not exactly fair to him and on her part it doesn’t exactly spell emotional progress but she can’t have Sam and she can’t deal with her pain the only other way she knows how because ultimately people will notice and it will mean readmission and she can not go back to the clinic, she hates it there, hates that they made her give up the one thing she could control, the one thing that she knew for sure that she was good at. She is not sure how far she is willing to let things go with Harrison or how long can she ignore the fact that she is settling for someone she doesn’t love, especially when that someone isn’t really interested her, he is just infatuated with the idea of dating the girl he thinks she is, a composite of the things she used to do. Can you build a relationship on having one major thing in common if that one thing is that you are both in love with the same girl? She knows this isn’t real but for a while she can use him as another in the series of Band-Aids she employs to cover the gaping hole in her heart. She also knows that that is all that Sam ever was, it’s just that Sam was a much sturdier bandage, the strongest she’s ever known, and she can’t help thinking that if she could of just kept Sam, it might have been the one dressing that would have held and then maybe she wouldn’t need anything else, not the popularity, not the control over her eating, nothing but Sam but then that would have made Sam just another flawed coping strategy and Sam deserves more than that, she deserves the world and more importantly someone who is capable of giving that to her and although it hurts to admit, Brooke knows that that person will never be her. She fears that she is destined to spend the rest of her life comparing the people she becomes involved with to Sam and finding them wanting, perhaps someday she will find someone else to fill the void but it’s not going to happen any time soon and until then she’ll will just have to use what ever stop gap measures she can find and for right now Harrison will have to do.


End file.
